Wednesday, 17 November 2010

Hohoho, dear Melted Felt readers, and not from the land of the jolly green giant either - as we bring you some shocking news of poker sites signing gardening accessories.

It all started when Ultimate Bet’s valiant effort to hire a more physically attractive team of pros (not that hard, you might think!), by bringing the lovely Maria Ho onto their books, ah Maria… Maria, Maria, Maria...

*Ahem* Anyway, the problem is that the spy employed by rival networks was driving through a tunnel when he broke the news to his bosses. This lead to a little bit of a mix-up in which online poker sites believed that their enemies were entering the garden implement area, triggering a chain reaction of potting-shed sized proportions.

Bwin immediately responded by immediately signing a rake, 2 snow shovels and a heavy-duty pair of pruning sheers to their team, ordering a press release to show off their new found gardening glory, and giving both fractional and decimal odds that no-one would beat them.

Party Poker read about this and were not amused, here they were being legal, wholesome, fluffy and family friendly [you are sure about the fluffy, right? ed] – and their $300 million bung to the Feds did not entitle them to so much as a floral window box with miniature watering can. Going one better, Party immediately offered an electrical hedge trimmer in a prize draw for all depositors in the next few days, provided they were prepared to fight through a field or 12,000 Russians with no fold buttons to win it.

Cake Poker reiterated their ‘no tools’ policy, planting seeds by making holes in the ground with their fingers only, then personally sh1tting on them instead of using chemical fertilizer.

Of course the topiary themed inducements to deposit did not escape the notice of Howard Lederer… whose personal assistant clambered over several gigantic piles of lovely money to bring him the outdoor-themed news. Within minutes a software upgrade was on the servers and satellites were running to the RTOPS, a championship series in which the winner of every tournament received their own rotorvator, sit-in-lawnmower or front-n-back yard matching set of sonic mole repellants.

We would love to tell you that this was the end of the matter, dear Melted Felt readers, that things settled down from here. Bulbs and seed packages were added to frequent player point stores, training videos on effective weeding were added to Cardrunners, forum wars started on the effective methods of creating shrubberies - and they all lived happily ever after… alas no.

Pokerstars have just announced their Combine-harvester freeroll series, complete with televised final table, qualifiers and, well, a big fvck-off expensive combine-harvester for the winner.